Thankful, mostly
by healingmirth
Summary: What do you do once you have everything you can remember wanting?  Jim's thoughts, spoilers through Survivor Man.


As a child, Jim had a little bit of a problem with thankfulness. His thanks had typically had a tinge of wanting more, of hinting, a month away from Christmas. He'd outgrown giving thanks in the form of, "I'm thankful that I have parents who love me enough to buy me a Game Boy," but in his head, he still had trouble letting what he had be good enough. He'd been taught that you're not supposed to bargain when you pray, and he figured you're probably not supposed to bargain when you're saying thanks either. It hadn't stopped him. _I'm thankful for a loving family, freedom, a safe place to live... but I would be so thankful if I could just have Pam. _

He was thankful now, so very thankful, but he'd spent so much time wanting that he didn't quite know what to do with himself. Not that he didn't _want _Pam any more. God, he did. But he was a little adrift without something that he wanted dangling just out of reach.

He started looking at his time in the office with new eyes. He remembered the days at work when it had felt like the camera was his only friend, or at least that the cameramen had been the only other people with the perspective to realize how ridiculous the whole office was; how ridiculous his life was. At least in the office, they hadn't passed judgment on him. They'd been part of the safety blanket buffering him from both his coworkers and the outside world, but their presence had cemented his role in the office, such that he couldn't really pretend he was just passing through anymore.

He defined himself, more than he was comfortable with, with that documentary. He was "that guy who looked at the camera" now. The one time he'd made a special effort to do anything other than clock time, to really work like people really do in a real office, Phyllis had called him Michael. It could have been worse. She could have called him Dwight, with his delusions of grandeur and no actual responsibility.

Of course, he was also "that guy who was dating Pam" now. Having Pam to share things with, all the time, he was willing to take a few more risks. He hoped that he'd get better at risks, too, and that he wasn't going to jump, trying to escape, only to rubber-band back when he discovered that this was where he belonged.

Jim envied Dwight a little. He'd felt a pinprick of pity when Dwight had lost himself in Second Life, but it brought home to Jim that maybe Dwight had really been just where he wanted to be, a few short months ago. Jim had never given much thought to whether Dwight was happy. It was pretty obvious that no one else in the office ever was. Well, Kelly... and Michael... but Jim wasn't sure they counted, since they quite possibly weren't seeing the life they actually lived. Dwight had reproduced his in meticulous detail. He had known what he had.

Sometimes Jim thought about settling in and being truly thankful for everything he had. He thought about being content, but he also wanted to keep dreaming up "impossible" things. Part of not explaining his avatar to Pam had been that he didn't know what Philly Jim had been: aspiration, dream, fantasy, goal? Not the flying, of course, but maybe...

He thought about his parents, about people he respected. What kept them going? Kids? It wasn't that he didn't want kids. The idea of Pam painting a nursery, of a little one running around, someday, lit him up like a Christmas tree, but he thought they needed some time to themselves, and Pam needed some time to follow her dreams too. Besides, Jim thought that having a kid just to give his life meaning might not be the best idea. It was uncomfortably close to something Michael might decide in one of his maudlin moods.

Pam had dreams, and it seemed like she had always had dreams of hundreds of little different things. Not that any of her dreams were "little" or unimportant, but she... he didn't think she had anything burning away at her heart, anymore, at least, but maybe it wasn't in her nature to fixate. Maybe she was the type to make do the best she could with what she had. But maybe life with Roy had taught her that, and Jim needed to make sure that all those times when he'd thought, "Dammit, I'd never..." stayed true.

Maybe she would learn to dream big from him, or maybe he'd learn to just be happy from her.

In the mean time, he updated his resume, and spent an hour or two a week poking around looking at job postings or advanced degree programs. He flipped through that copy of What Color is Your Parachute that his mother had given him when he could do nothing but complain about work, but couldn't face the thought of leaving. As weeks passed, his search radius expanded. Sometimes it included California, Texas, Maine. Sometimes they'd watch tv together and during travel shows or sit-coms set in middle America she'd ask, "Have you ever thought of living somewhere else? Far away? Like the mountains? Or the beach?"

He'd relocated once, and besides the obvious, it hadn't been a total disaster. He started to get used to the idea that making a life somewhere new might not be running away, or maybe it would still be running away but it was okay because he wouldn't be running away alone anymore. He knew that they probably didn't really want to move to Colorado, but it made Baltimore seem a little more possible. Or maybe Scranton was okay. Together.


End file.
